Quick Review: Motorola Z2 Play

[GlenBarrington]

I finally replaced my elderly Samsung Galaxy S5 yesterday. I got a Motorola Z2 Play. I'm in the USA, and I don't know if Lenovo sells it under a different name elsewhere in the world. A quick and casual search did not provide any evidence that the phone carries a different name elsewhere, but it WAS a quick and casual search.

This is a true Motorola phone and not a 'Droid' brand phone which Motorola makes exclusively for Verizon. There wasn't as much crapware on it as I've seen in the past, though there is SOME.

At any rate, I thought I'd review it in terms of how suitable it is as an eBook reader. I used both the Kindle Android app and Moon Reader Pro as my reader apps.

The screen is 5.5 in, almost as large as the screen in my PW2. However, the screen dimensions are different in that the aspect ratio of the PW2 is roughly 4:3 while the phone is 16:9, so the PW2 feels roomier.

Even so, the screen on the phone is big enough to read comfortably, and even smaller text is readable to my aging eyes.

Image quality is quite high for graphics, as one would expect, but the text itself is also sharp and clear.

Animated page turns are quick and fluid and respond instantly. I tried the Moon Reader pro's scrolling function by line and by pixel. Line scrolling, I found to be somewhat disorienting, though the pixel level scrolling was smooth and very readable.

I still prefer the PW2 for long term reading, though I wish it were a bit more responsive. It CAN get a little sluggish at times. However, the Moto Z2 Play, is fast and responsive, and it makes for a fine ebook reader in it's own right. Certainly adequate for those long waits in the Doctor's waiting room, and for many casual readers, it would be suitable as their only ebook reader, I think.

It has a lot of other very nice smartphone features, but I won't go into them, since this is a forum about reading. Motorola has a HUGE fleet of phones right now. Too many, I think. This isn't really considered a 'flagship' phone, since I paid only $408 US for it from Verizon. (Half the cost of the newest phones from Apple and Samsung!) I would place it in the upper middle tier in the smartphone food chain; though it functions very much like a flagship phone. I am satisfied, so far.